blorgon

I don't think it's necessarily an issue, so much as it is that the orbital display seems to show information differently than KER, and so it can get confusing. I'm almost positive this is a case of user error. For example: I had used the targeting computer to set my target for Duna. Alex Moon's planner told me my ejection angle would be ~150° to prograde. So I time warped to the window, waited until the orbital display's ejection angle readout was at 150°, then burned prograde. I ended up on a transfer going almost entirely in the wrong direction. I watched one of @nukeboyt's all-IVA videos, and noticed they performed their transfer to Duna when the ejection angle on the orbital display was approaching 0°. I quickloaded, and tried again, this time waiting until the display was close to 0°, and the transfer turned out perfect. So it seems that the ejection angle readout is actually reading the angle TO the ideal ejection angle, maybe? My original question was whether there was a resource that clearly explains what the readouts mean, since they weren't immediately apparent to me. I've since gotten the hang of all-IVA flying, but my first couple of flights were almost always just shots in the dark. Anyway, again, I don't think there's a problem with the mod. It is almost assuredly an issue of me being inexperienced.

I was actually wondering mostly about the flight computers, since some of the readouts (specifically on the orbital display; there's a discrepancy between the orbital display's ejection angle, and the ejection angle that KER gives, something I've learned since having asked this question).

For what it's worth, I actually had this problem (part replicating after attaching to radial attachment point that was placed in VAB) back in 1.0.5. Just a heads up.

Update: Just touched down safely after returning from my Duna trip. I've landed on Duna several times now, but each time I went, I screwed some part of the mission up, whether it was forgetting parts, or screwing up maneuvers that cost me too much fuel. This is actually the first time (~500 hours) that I've completed an interplanetary mission from launch to splashdown.

Did what is likely to be my last mission before a fresh install with the 1.1 pre-release. I've been holding out because I've been absolutely loving flying with @alexustas's MK1-2 IVA overhaul. But the game has been crashing a lot for me lately, so I'm moving on to bigger and better things so that I can start working on some of my more ambitious (for me) mission plans, since I've also been putting those off in favor of 1.1.

Why do you think that? What is it about planets that you think don't make for good sims? All you need (environmentally speaking) in order to simulate flight are atmospheric (if any) and gravitational conditions, both of which can be written into code. I don't think you quite understood my idea. I'm talking about the kind of procedural generation that No Man's Sky and Astroneer do, which is done one time, based off of a seed with intentionally specified conditions. I'm not talking about KSP procedurally generating a planetary system on the fly every time you start a new game (I should've made that a little more clear, my bad), I'm talking about Squad "spec-ing out" a dozen or so seeds that they could then easily grow planetary systems out of, within which they could make alterations. It's not like it would be completely random; they could set parameters that would limit how many gas giants there would be, and how massive they could get, et cetera. Furthermore, with the exception of "Hot Jupiters", gas giants generally tend to form on the outer reaches of planetary systems. I don't really understand what you mean when you say that the game would have to make assumptions about "the gas giant near the sun". What do you mean by "ruin the orbits"? This is exactly what the real Jupiter does, by the way—it "ruins" the orbits of asteroids in such a way that they generally don't hit Earth and, earlier in the solar system's history, cleared out the inner solar system of planetesimals, making a relatively clean and clear path for Earth so that it could cool, and its environment could develop without constantly having to start over after a catastrophic collision. [emphasis mine] Well that's a silly thing to proclaim. Not only is it highly probable that there is life elsewhere in the universe (possibly even in our own solar system, i.e., Europa), it is highly likely. So... I guess I don't understand your argument. Also, we're talking about the Kerbolar system, which, you know, has Eve. Can't really be making the argument that KSP should more or less represent the real solar system, since clearly it's only inspired by it. I don't see how you can say that it's not possible to procedurally generate stable planetary systems where life could develop since we, IRL, are very familiar with the conditions under which it developed (the only thing we don't know for certain is where it came from). I also don't understand what you mean by "we don't know what planets in which places". If you're talking about how planets and their positions influences the possibility for life to develop in the habitable zone, then yes, we do generally know how, as I explained earlier with Jupiter. Finally, I'm not talking about replacing the Kerbolar system entirely. I'm only talking about one game mode wherein you wouldn't be playing in the Kerbolar system—Science Mode.

I know you mean you want to do this in game, but you can also actually do this in real life! Have you ever heard of citizen science? I spent a few weeks over winter break cataloging impact craters on the surface of Mars, and tagging potential exoplanets using transit photometry data. As far as the subject is concerned, somebody upthread (sometime last year ) mentioned that people have "already seen" the Kerbolar System, and that there'd be no point in introducing fog-of-war. I tend to agree with this sentiment. But for the record, I'm all about doing real science in game. How about a different, procedurally generated planetary system for every new Science Mode save. What they could do is make a pre-determined set of seeds the game could use*, where each one is permanently tied to the progression of save games (Save Game #1 = Planetary System Seed A; Save Game #2 = Planetary System Seed B; et cetera). That way, there'd still be the shared experience that is so important to the community, but would allow a player to start a new save and go on to start exploring system #2 once they have discovered all they can about the current system. And of course, there'd have to be a dedicated sub-forum for each system for the players currently playing in those systems. Since, you know, this thread is pretty much comprised of pipe-dreams *What I mean is that Squad could write some basic criteria for the creation of planetary systems, hit the "Go" button, and make a planetary system just like that. I don't necessarily mean that the game itself would procedurally generate on the fly. I'm talking about developers building planetary systems quickly and easily using the kind of procedural generation No Man's Sky and Astroneer use, where it is used as a quick and easy way to generate lots of content with lots of variety.

This thread hits a little close to home, because ALCOR by alexustas is looking pretty abandoned. I can't not fly all-IVA now. ...Which means I'm still playing 1.0.5 8{

Look at the post right above yours.

Yep. Found it. Thanks!

Keep going.

Playing since 2013, never once seen this before:

Finally got my first space station in orbit! Okay okay, I didn't assemble it. I was actually able to launch it in one piece because it's so compact and symmetrical. So, it's not really the holy grail of docking and orbital construction that I'd originally planned. Yes, I'll absolutely build a bigger station in the future. For now, I just wanted something that could do science, function as a habitation module, and accommodate fuel tankers to allow interplanetary ships to refuel at the station. The lighting wasn't just an aesthetic choice (although, for me, it's much easier on the eyes than red/green as I'd originally planned), I lit the station this way in order to be able to tell its orientation from far out on approach. It just happens to look pretty nice, too. During normal orbital operations, the station will point prograde so that the solar panels (which are oriented north to south when the craft is oriented pro- or retrograde) will maintain full exposure through the day. Whenever a mission requires docking to the station, it will orient one of four docking ports to prograde depending on which is needed. The docking ports are set up as two pressurized crew tubes opposite each other, for docking to manned vessels; the other two are unpressurized utility ports which house batteries, monopropellant, and fuel lines for tankers to transfer fuel to the manned docking ports. The science lab is actually the 3.75m habitation module from Stock Station Parts Expansion whose .cfg I modified for the purpose. I took its crew capacity from 8 down to 3 (to "make room" for a full laboratory), upped the mass (to account for equipment), and added the science research ability and data storage from the stock game's mobile processing lab (but with extra data storage). Otherwise, the station is perfectly symmetrical and maneuvers like a charm. Don't even need to use the RCS except for during the initial installation orbit inclination adjustments. The lab is on the yellow side, and the habitation module is on the blue side. Everything is also symmetrically strutted with KIS struts, which are so much more satisfying and easy to install than the struts in the VAB. Right now, the station is sitting at 101,443 x 101,399 with an inclination of 0.00047, which is probably the sweetest orbit I've ever gotten.

Full res here.

I'm by no means experienced, but I've edited a few .cfg files recently. If you use Module Manager, you could either clone the probe core you require science ability from so that you can have an alternate version of it and can still use the stock core, or just edit the probe core's .cfg, if you plan on always needing to do science with it. I'd suggest adding the ModuleScienceLab and ModuleScienceConverter modules to the probe core in question, it'd certainly look a lot nicer than a honey-I-shrunk-the-mobile-processing-lab deal. Again, though, not sure if it'll work. You're also not going to get the scientist bonus, if that's something you care about.

Have you ever heard of Editor Extensions? It allows you to not only add perfect struts to your crafts, but also surface attach anything (as long as it's able) and then center it on the part vertically, and also horizontally (as well as go up to 20-part symmetry!).

One small thing I was thinking about today is surface samples and how lame they are. I cannot begin to describe how disappointed I was the first time I landed on the Mun, walked about 500m to a giant rock (didn't even know about EVA RCS), and then walked through it. Somebody mentioned surface sample animations. That'd be neat. What I'd really love to see are real rocks, some of which contain interesting materials. I'd like to have a reason to visit a particular crater, collect surface samples, and gather information about the object that made the crater. Maybe some geode-like rocks, where there's a chance that the rock you're performing a surface sample on has something special inside, like exotic crystals, or some ultra-rare element. In general, I want to see science get fleshed out in the game—more experiments, more tools, more types of science to be done.

Catering to the lowest common denominator is how games (and game franchises) stagnate. This should never, ever, be a reason not to do something in a game.

Sorry. Figured it out. @DuoDex please delete this thread.

This is an update on this post. Ended up having to redo my all-IVA Apollo reenactment because of some performance issues with KW rocketry parts I was using that I had downloaded specifically for the mission. Uninstalled them, rebuilt the rocket using SpaceY boosters (wasn't going for replica craft, just the basic mission procedures), did the whole thing again. This was my first all-IVA mission, and my first time using the ALCOR module. Also my first time flying without maneuver nodes. Anyway, I had to go to the external camera a few times to get my bearings during some really tense moments while trying to re-dock with the Service Module after launching from the Munar surface. I also had to retry this part twice because I only just recently docked for the first time, and am still learning how to do it consistently (plus learning how to read the docking instrumentation in the ALCOR pod).

Awesome. Downloaded and pulled the MK1-2 from the zip. Thanks for the heads-up!

The most recent posted link is broken. Anybody have a link?

I can't really figure out where the most appropriate place to ask this is, so forgive me! I'm wondering if there's a resource out there somewhere that describes the instrumentation in the ALCOR pod. Most of it I think is pretty intuitive, but there are a few things I'm unsure about, particularly in regards to the orbital map display. Basically looking for a user manual for the IVA props.

My first all-IVA mission (still flying; taking a break while I drift back towards Kerbin) in the ALCOR landing capsule. It's very challenging, but I figure there's no better way to learn how to fly this thing than to go straight for the Mun, with Valentina's life on the line to boot. Was all-IVA up until this point. Just wanted to take a peek, and was totally blown away that I happened to switch to the chase camera at such a perfect moment. Probably the coolest accidental shot I've stumbled across so far. Just your basic Munar landing, with a little seismometer experiment installed on the surface. Just down the slope was a surprisingly large, flat area, so this will serve as a landing site for a planned colonization mission.

This is by far the biggest single quality-of-life-improving mod for this game (RPM included). I've used a few hundred mods over the course of the last few years, but I had only just found this the other day, and have been totally obsessed ever since. Currently flying an all-IVA Apollo-style Munar landing. It's incredibly challenging, and extremely satisfying.